The irony in environmental news

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Monthly Archives: September 2016

“At least 16 of the 100 largest pay-outs under the [EU Common Agricultural Policy] single payment scheme last year went to entities owned or run by people featured in the Sunday Times Rich List …
Other recipients in the Top 100 include wealthy foreign owners …
A spokesperson for the Earl of Moray said: ‘All our payments are received for land in hand and actively farmed by our business. As for the vast majority of farmers in the UK CAP support is an important part of our income and helps deliver the intended public policy objectives of maintaining food production, social fabric and environmental standards in rural areas.'” (http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2016/09/29/common-agricultural-policy-millions-eu-subsidies-go-richest-landowners/)

Social fabric? That would be the wool you’re trying to pull over our eyes.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; give him a trawler and he’ll feed his family on caviar wrapped in gold leaf for three decades before leaving the ecological bomb crater for someone else to sort out.

“The UK’s energy department, BEIS, today announced the go-ahead for the controversial Hinkley Point C (HPC) nuclear power plant in Somerset … [despite]
•its very high cost, more than double the current wholesale power price and far more than the current cost of even high-cost renewable power from offshore wind;
•security concerns over China’s involvement in core UK infrastructure;
•the lack of any single example of a working EPR reactor anywhere in the world;
•the severe delays, cost overuns and technical problems at all EPR construction sites;
•the low value of HPC’s contribution to UK energy supply in the new decentralised ‘smart grid’ era;
•and, common to all nuclear power, the continued absence of any solution to the nuclear waste problem.” (http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2988131/hinkley_c_nuclear_goahead_may_caves_in_to_pressure_from_france_and_china.html)

“Ministers will impose a new legal framework for future foreign investment in Britain’s critical infrastructure, which will include nuclear energy and apply after Hinkley.” (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-confirms-hinkley-point-c-project-following-new-agreement-in-principle-with-edf)
After Hinkley?
“Hinkley Point C will provide seven per cent of Britain’s electricity needs for sixty years.”
Plus building and decommissioning time. So at least 100 years. If anyone can be bothered reviewing historical documents. If we haven’t extinguished ourselves by then. That’s a very long kick into very long grass.

“The Government will be able to prevent the sale of EDF’s controlling stake prior to the completion of construction, without the prior notification and agreement of ministers. This agreement will be confirmed in an exchange of letters between the Government and EDF.”
Who is this Government if it is not ministers?

“After Hinkley, the British Government will take a special share in all future nuclear new build projects.”
British Government, not UK. So, in 100 years, whatever artificial intelligence entity comprises Government is expected to have disintegrated the union of regions, if not yet detached from Europe.

“A new era of UK nuclear power – building on Britain’s strong nuclear legacy.”
That would be the nuclear waste, bequeathed to anyone left standing in 1000 years.

“The Contract for Difference would provide a set price of £92.50 per megawatt hour of electricity provided by Hinkley Point C for 35 years once it begins generating.”
Start betting on a very high rate of inflation.